When software is installed on a hard drive of a personal computer, the hard drive must first be initialized and formatted. Software is then physically copied or loaded onto the hard drive from a floppy disk or a CD ROM disk. A disadvantage of physically installing software in this manner is the time required to do so.
When personal computers are mass produced, a manufacturer can take advantage of a common software configuration when loading software onto the hard drives. A computer system is set up as a model system having the desired software configuration that is to be duplicated in other personal computers. Once the model system has been set up, a digital image of the hard drive is created. The digital image is essentially a "picture" of the hard drive. Creating a digital image of the hard drive is well known to those skilled in the art. Once this image is created, it is distributed to the other hard drives requiring the same configuration. The result is that all of the computer systems receiving a copy of the image during their manufacturing and assembly process will have the same hard drive contents as the model system.
For software upgrades on existing computer systems, an image is created for a set of changes to be made to the hard drive and the set of changes are then transferred to the computer systems. This results in quicker computer upgrades, which in turn provides a cost savings, particularly when a large number of computer systems are to be upgraded.
Nonetheless, a disadvantage of this approach requires that a model system first be set up utilizing the same operating system and the same set of applications as desired on the other computer systems. To set up the model system, the software must be physically loaded from a disk onto the model computer system before the image can be created for transferring to the other computers.
Even if a group of computers are networked together, a baseline configuration must also be established on the file server which requires that the file server physically be set up with the desired software configuration from a disk. The file server then allows the networked computers to have access to the new configuration. Networking prevents a system administrator from having to install software upgrades individually on each computer system. However, the upgrade must first be made to the file server which requires installation via a disk.
What is needed is a method or process for creating a desired software configuration without having to create a separate baseline configuration for each unique software configuration. This would save time and expense for a manufacturer or even a system administrator supporting a large number of computer work stations.
For the reasons stated above, and for other reasons stated below which will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading and understanding the present specification, there is a need in the art for a software creation/distribution process that is performed without having to physically set up a model system using a disk for each unique configuration desired.